Ofsted reports - October 2019
A summary of the Ofsted reports of children's services inspections published in October.
Senior leaders focused on improving children’s services at Newcastle
Senior leaders at Newcastle have been resolute in their focus to improve children’s services, Ofsted has found.
At the last Ofsted inspection of Newcastle upon Tyne children’s services, in April 2017, the overall [...]
Blog: Fostering and Attachment
By David Bocking: Fostering and Attachment
Our new baby is a walker. She arrived fairly suddenly, we had a call in the afternoon and then there she was with her social worker, just before teatime, a little girl who couldn’t yet talk faced with two people she’d never met who she was going to [...]
MPs urge link between exclusions and knife crime to be tackled
Mainstream schools need to be more accountable for the children they exclude in a bid to break the link between school exclusions and knife crime.
That is the key message from the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Knife Crime, supported by Barnardo's and youth charity Redthread, which calls an end to part-time education for excluded pupils.
Evidence of improvement at Reading but practice remains variable
There has been evidence of improvement in most areas of practice at Reading children's services since the last Ofsted inspection.
A children's services inspection found that Reading children’s services were judged inadequate in 2016. Frequent, and often sudden, changes in the senior leadership team since then have hampered progress in improving services for children.
This, [...]
Families of SEND children face bureaucracy and confusion
Families of children with special educational needs and disabilities are facing a "nightmare of bureaucracy, buck-passing and confusion", due to poorly implemented legislation, according to a report.
An 18-month inquiry into government reforms aimed at placing children and young people at the heart of the SEND system by the Education Committee found a generation of [...]
Migrant children to access legal aid more easily
Migrant children who have been separated from their parents will have easier access to legal aid, the government has announced.
New legislation - The Legal Aid for Separated Children Order 2019 - will ensure that non-asylum immigration and citizenship matters for under 18s who are not in the care of a parent, guardian or legal [...]
